perchance to read . . .

It is a measure of how far I have changed (in certain respects) that, as I was having lunch I noticed a face I recognized on a television screen behind the bar. I knew him as a past Barça player and it was only a moment before I remembered his name – Deco.



I know to those who know anything about football this is hardly something which merits a feather from Big Chief I-Spy but for me is it a breakthrough – the next thing I will be doing is actually using the names of the pupils in my classes.


But seriously, leaving fantasy to one side, this is more than I can do for any British team – apart, of course, for Ryan Giggs and even I know who he plays for, apart from Wales that is.


Well, that’s exhausted my footballing conversation so back to safer topics.


Apart from odd (very odd) short stories on my phone I have read a novel there called, “The International Spy” by Allen Upward and published in 1904. The book is a thriller with the “baddie” being the Kaiser, though even he turn out to be quite a sporting cove when his dastardly plans are frustrated by the elegant and resourceful spy in the title.


I read this because somewhere in my memory is a collection of short stories called “The Railway Accident and Other Stories” by a left wing writer called Upward. The biography of Allen is interesting and sounds totally made up and I can only assume that he wrote other things which were much more intellectually satisfying than this pulp exercise in vague racist xenophobia.

The other book I have read today is a real one and bought from W H Smith in Luton: “13 Things That Don’t Make Sense – The most intriguing scientific mysteries of our times” by Michael Brooks.


Towards the end of the book, after considering the implications of the “horizon problem” and the uniform temperature of the universe, he writes: “The solutions to the other anomalies might have similarly wide-ranging implications: investigating the origin of death and the story of the giant viruses might lead to radical revisions in evolution: understanding the placebo effect could – and probably should – change the face of medicine; coming to grips with the delusion of free will could alter the way we look at human beings and their responsibilities. It is safe to say, I think, that there is more than enough work ahead for the next generation of radical-thinking scientists – and the generation after that.”


This is the sort of book where I know that I have read all the words but I am not sure that I can explain what I have understood. And that is sad because Michael Brooks writes in clear and fairly simple language; but I am never truly happy when people start taking about quanta at one end and billions of galaxies at the other. I am sure that it has been good for my soul to come to terms with concepts and to discover just how fluid definitions are for things like life, free will, death, sex and the missing matter in the universe.


I am now dangerously overloaded with half understood scientific questions which can make science teachers’ lessons just that little bit more trying as pupils regale them with unanswerable questions from casual remarks in mine!


I well remember a furious colleague rounding on me in the staff room after I had “explained” light to a bemused group of sixth formers – my explanations being based totally on my reading of the play “Hapgood” by Tom Stoppard – and the poor science teacher having to repair the scientific damage I had done to his erstwhile students!


My next W H Smith book is on evolution. God help!  So to speak.


And only one day left before the return to school.


Perhaps I would be safer sticking to the phone and pulp!